Schwarzkopf: You're saying that, I'm not!

Q: No that's what Freddy Franks sat there and said. I mean, weren't they just following from the plan...?

Schwarzkopf: It appeared to everyone, it wasn't just me, it was everyone who was watching the unfolding in this battle that they appeared to be wedded to their initial plan which was one that would cause them to engage a numerically superior, well dug in, enemy in what would be a very tough fight, when in fact the enemy situation was changing before all of our eyes and yet they were continuing to execute the same plan. And that's what it appeared to all of us sitting in the war room.

Q: Freddy Franks eventually called you. Do you remember that conversation and what you said to him?

Schwarzkopf: I had not expected the call from Freddy .. because I had been dealing, as I quite properly should, I tried very hard not to jump the change in plan but Freddy had been told by John Yeosack that he ought to give me a call and let me know what was going on.

I then took Freddy's call and what he had told me was he.. he felt that he had gone up and around some Iraqi units and was going to attack down to the south to eliminate them before he continued on, and I then told him, at that time, "I don't want you going south. What I want you to do is I want you to go north and to the east because that's where the Republican Guard is and we're in an exploitation, we have to get these guys before they get away from us!"

Q: Tthe first engagement really, VII Corps and the Iraqis. Do you remember that? It was called 73 Easting subsequently. It was when they first made contact, when they started to fight.

Schwarzkopf: Well, you know, when VII Corps finally you know, engaged the enemy they did a marvellous job and I was quite relieved that they had finally gotten up there and gotten in contact with some of the Republican Guard and could start get on with the battle and, you know, pin these guys down.

And they did a good job when they got there, they did a very fine job when they got there.

Q: The night.. actually the night before you spoke to Freddy Franks, February the 26th, you got the news that the Iraqis were pulling out of Kuwait and the bombing of Highway Six started. Do you remember that? Why did you bomb them?

Schwarzkopf: Well, the first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway and, again, I had given orders to all of my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroyed, because if we destroyed that Iraqi military equipment that was equipment that would not be around for them to use later on.

Secondly, the people that were running away from Kuwait were the people that had been inflicting the atrocities on the City of Kuwait, they were all military people and by the way, just about every vehicle that they were fleeing in was a vehicle that they had stolen from Kuwait.

So this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border er to Iraq, this was a bunch of.. of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.

Q: When you get to the final day of the war, February the 27th, the day in which the decision is taken ultimately to end it at the end of the following morning. Could you just paint a picture for me. How did the battlefield look that morning, February 27th, to you?

Schwarzkopf: Well it was more the evening of the 27th. By the evening of the 27th, 18th Airborne Corps had exploited all the waves of the Tigris and Euphrates area to the point where they were now swinging across to the east and were going to be able to drive very far forward and completely cut off the Iraqi forces that were in Kuwait.

Q: How does the battlefield look that morning? What sort of enemy are you dealing with, what have your guys achieved?

Schwarzkopf: On the morning of the 27th all across the front we've engaged the enemy, the enemy is in complete withdrawal. We've accomplished all of our objectives on the western side, we've also accomplished our principle objectives on the eastern side. Kuwait City is being occupied and it looks like, as a matter of fact, we're just in a mopping up operation inflicting as many casualties on the enemy as we can and destroying as much of his military equipment.

Q: Colin Powell called you at three o clock, and you discussed how much more time was needed. Can you tell me the conversation? What happened?

Schwarzkopf: The exact conversation was-- "What.. what are your plans?" And I told him--"I plan to continue the operation as it was originally designed, and that is to continue with this envelopment movement that went over and drove all the way to the sea and cut off everybody below".

And he then asked me when I thought that would be completed and I told him that I thought that would be completed by the end of the day on the 28th. This was information that I'd asked my Army commander about and he had told by the end of the day of 28th.

And then he asked me-- "Could you stop tomorrow morning?"

And I did a very very quick mental calculation and basically said that we have accomplished all of our military ojectives and if need be we could stop tomorrow morning.

I will confess to you that part of that deliberation had to do with American casualties. We had accomplished what we'd accomplished with so few casualties and another day of the war, more or less, would only cause more people to die that didn't need to die.

So I said yes if he wanted us to stop the following morning I could stop, but I would have to have sufficient advance notice to make sure that the word got out to all of my troops.

And he said "OK fine. I will get back to you".

He then called me back later and we joked, we actually joked at the time about you know, I think I told him-- "If you stop this thing when you do it'll be the four day war or the three day war, or something like that which will then make it the most successful war in history!"

. Q: Well let me ask you about what do you remember saying to him about the five day war?

Schwarzkopf: Well, we had already talked about it in the war room when John Yeosock had told me that he felt that they could accomplish all their objectives by the night of the 28th and I don't know who it was, and maybe it was me who came up with the fact that "Hey, this is a five day war and up until now everybody has said, you know, the Six Day War was the greatest and most rapid victory there was and now, all of a sudden, we have a five day war!"

So it sort of had a good feeling about it and it was a joke and I just said to him I said "I hope you realise that this would be the five, you know, there'd be a five day war!" And he laughed and said "That's right".

He called me back subsequently and said "How about if we shut the war off at ..." midnight I guess it was, Washington time, which would of made it eight o clock in the morning our time or nine o clock in the morning or something like that. And I said "Fine. I once again have to get to my commanders to make sure that they can all do this but I think they can and unless I get back to you that'll be fine".

And then he made the comment "Well that'll make it a hundred hour war!" And I laughed and I said "Terrific!" You know, the whole conversation was a lighthearted one. We were both feeling very good about what was happening at that time.

And I checked with my commanders and they, in fact, assured me that they could meet those time lines and that's what transpired.

Q: You'd always been very concerned about getting the Republican Guard and it's clear from reading from your book that you regret you weren't able to get at them a bit more. Why didn't you say to Colin Powell "Hey, I'd really like to carry on longer, I'd like to finish off the Republican Guard. It's not a good time to stop".

Schwarzkopf: The truth of the matter is that when you're sitting where I'm sitting the picture of the battlefield is not that clear.

At that time I knew we'd inflicted a lot of casualties on them, I knew we'd been pounding them with air for over a month, the reports I was getting from the battlefield was that we were inflicting huge casualties on them. At that time we had reports of over fifty thousand prisoners, which turned out eventually to be eighty thousand prisoners. So every picture that had painted for me in my headquarters was that of an overwhelming success.

I did in fact call back and say"I hope you understand that that if we do stop this there are going to be pictures tomorrow of tanks going across the river back into Iraq intact" and he got back to me and said he had sent that message through and it had been acknowledged.

That's because, from my commanders, I'd had.. received word that tomorrow was going to be a turkey shoot and that this is in fact what they'd be going after.

In that regard Barry McCaffrey said to me, after the fact, he said "We stopped at the right time" he said "the battlefield was getting very murky. It was very hard to determine those people who were trying to surrender versus those people that were continuing to fight. We could have very easily had some war crimes on our hands by shooting people who were trying to give up and things were getting very confusing". So he endorsed the fact that we stopped when we did.

But there was no question about the fact that we had accomplished an overwhelming military victory. We had accomplished all of our objectives. We had inflicted great, great casualties and great damage to the Republican Guard. We had inflicted great damage to the Iraqi military force and we had ejected the Iraqis out of Kuwait and that, after all, was the purpose of it and we'd done it all with an amazingly low loss of life.

So I didn't have any compunctions about stopping and to this day I don't. It was a decision that had to be made at some point and that was as good a point as any.

Q: Did Colin Powell in either conversation.. or the first conversation say to you, as some people have implied to me, that "Hey, you know, the President feels it's time to stop. He's worried about the carnage" and you sort of reluctantly said "Yeh, well, if the President feels that let's do it".

Schwarzkopf: Absolutely not.

Q: Was it the impression given to you that the President wanted it stopped?

Schwarzkopf: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Colin Powell did say to me at one point that the reporting has turned negative, that there are photographers all over the `highway of death' talking about the innocent people that have been killed on the `highway of death' and there is some concern in Washington about this kind of reportig and implied that that might have been driving the decision to stop when we did. But there was never any implication that the President thinks he wants to stop it now so therefore, you know, we ought to stop it.

Q: You had always wanted to destroy the Republican Guard. That first briefing you gave em you'd said to all you Generals "I don't want them degraded, I don't want them mistreated, I want them destroyed". And here was your opportunity, your forces were poised to encircle them entirely. Why did you draw back at this moment?

Schwarzkopf: Well, I don't consider it a drawing back. From the information that I had in my headquarters we had inflicted tremendous damage on the Republican Guard.

We had bombed them for over thirty days straight, we had attacked them and fought them, we had destroyed many many many pieces of equipment, we had attacked from the air during the ground campaign and inflicted great damage on them.

So I already felt that there were several divisions of the Republican Guard, it was reported to me, that had been destroyed. It wasn't a hundred percent destruction but had we been allowed to go on for one more day it would not have been a hundred percent destruction then.

Q: You would have had them then encircled entirely?

Schwarzkopf: Except those that had already managed to escape, and there had been a considerable flow across the bridges. Where we really had them was we had them up against the river and there were very few bridges to go across so the next day, had we chosen to go in there and bomb these huge concentration of forces, we could have inflicted a great deal of damage on them there.

Q: And then you've got the later call which was about ten thirty, could you describe what did Colin Powell say to you, what did you say to him?

Schwarzkopf: Colin Powell called -- it was late in the evening in our headquarters. He said-- "I'm at the White House. We've discussed ending the war in five days. Could you in fact execute a ceasefire if it was declared effective midnight Washington time tonight?" which would have been first thing in the morning our time.

I told him that I could live with that, that I had to contact all of my commanders to make absolutely sure that they could in fact execute those orders in the limited amount of time possible and, therefore, if that was the decision I needed to know as soon as possible but I was quite satisfied with that decision if the decision was made in Washington.

Q: Would you have liked the war to continue to be a five day war rather than an a hundred hour war?

Schwarzkopf: You mean in hindsight?

Q: Whichever, in hindsight or then.

Schwarzkopf: Well, as long as I'm allowed to live in this fantasy world of hindsight, I would have been delighted if the war would have continued on for another 24 hours and we had taken zero casualties! OK?

I mean, if the war was going to go on more people were going to be killed and, quite frankly, the driving force behind my saying that I could live with it, was the fact that if we went on another day we were going to kill some more of our people and we had already won an overwhelming victory with a minimum of casualties and that was good enough for me.

Q: But in your book you talk about.. "Well, if Freddy Franks had moved a bit faster, maybe we would have got at the Republican Guard". His line is "If you wanted to get at them so badly, why did you stop then?" Freddy Franks said "I was poised that night, I couldn't believe it when I was stopped. Tomorrow was going to be the decisive battle".

Schwarzkopf: The answer to that is quite simply that I didn't stop anything!

The President of the United States in Washington D.C. stopped it. It wasn't General Schwarzkopf that stopped anything!

Anybody who knows anything about the military knows that we have our masters and the decision was made in Washington to stop the war when it did. They asked me if I concurred in that decision and I did concur in that decision.

Q: They say they stopped it because you told them you'd achieved everything.

Schwarzkopf: We had achieved all of our military objectives.

Q: Let me rephrase this to you..... just for the record I'm trying to establish, did you feel that the driving force was coming from the White House or was it a matter of you saying "No no, we've done everything, let's finish it" or was it, as others have told me who were close to you, that you felt that the White House was saying "Hey, we'd really like to stop this".

Schwarzkopf: Oh there's no question about the fact that this was presented to me as a fait accompli in Washington.

It was Washington had made the decision that they wanted the war to stop at midnight and they were just calling me to find out if I had any violent objections. You know, it was never presented "Well, we'd like to stop it at midnight but if you don't concur with this then we'll let you go on all day tomorrow". That was not the case at all. It was quite the contrary, it was presented to me as a fait accomplit "Do you concur in this decision?"

And I'd already said that I can live with it and.. to them.. I'd said that to them before and I said it again "I can live with that decision". I didn't say that "Oh, I'm violently... I'm euphoric about this thing and it's absolutely the best of all possible worlds" and that sort of thing. Quite frankly I don't think anybody could have said that at the time because you don't have that clear a picture of what's going on in the battlefield.

Plain and simply, Washington came to me after we had won an overwhelming victory at a minimum loss of lives and said "We want to stop the war at midnight tonight. Do you have any problem with that?"

And my answer was "No I don't have any problem with that". So it's just that simple. There's no more or any less to it. OK? It's just plain and simply--that's the context in which the message was delivered and the answer that was given.

You know, the Iraqis went in to that war, OK, with 64 divisions I believe it was, forty four of those divisions ended up in Kuwait, OK? The total Iraqi army today consists of 24 divisions. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out the amount of destruction to the Iraqi armed forces that took place in Desert Storm. I should say something else again, this is very important.

You know, maybe it is the `objectives' word we're talking about. When the military talks in terms of objectives, you know, there are various objectives all across the map that you plan to attack and take, OK. Objectives does mean all the subtle inferences.. I mean the subtle accomplishments that you expect to accomplish all the way through.

So perhaps in focusing too much on the word we have accomplished all our objectives, we are losing sight of what we're really talking about.

Q: I guess the key thing I'm coming back to is this. When I talked to the people who were sat in that room, in the White House.... Baker, Cheney, Richard Haass, Gates and Scowcroft and various other people who were sitting there.... They say yes there was concern on the part of Colin Powell about the slaughter. There was no concern among the politicians...What you're telling me rather turns that on its head.

Schwarzkopf: Wait a minute. Wait. Just a minute now. Realistically, it is not a military decision to go to war any more than it is a military decision to end a war. The decision to go to war and the decision to end a war is completely, totally and one hundred percent a political decision. Period.

The military doesn't decide to go to war, the military does not decide to end a war. OK? This is a political decision made by governments of nations based upon information that's given to them.

So anyone who says it was a military decision to end the war is a cop out artist, that's what it is. OK, it's just that simple. Again, I wasn't in the room, any more than I was in the room on the 6th October briefing that I dearly wished I had been there, but I wasn't there. So I know nothing about what went on in that room. I know what I said, I know what said to me on the other end of the telephone and I have explained a thousand times how that came down.

Q: If you had been in the room and not talking through someone else, what would you have said directly to the President? What would you have said to him?

Schwarzkopf: I haven't the slightest idea because that's a hypothetical question. I would have been anwering a question that was asked of me and a lot of it would have had to do with the context and the way the question was asked.

One more time, one more time, OK? The question was posed to me, OK?

"What are you going to do tomorrow?""We are going to continue to execute the plan as it is written," OK? "That will give us a five day war. Would you have any objection to stopping the war tomorrow morning?" That means I'm going to stand up and say "No, I absolutely insist we go on with the war for another twelve or fourteen hours".

You realise, I hope, that we are talking eight hours, is what we're talking, OK? The war ended at eight o clock in the morning our time, or nine o clock in the morning, it otherwise would have ended at five o clock in the afternoon. So the total time frame we're talking about is eight lousy hours and it's been blown totally out of proportion, totally out of proportion.

But "Do you have any objection?"

I said "No, I can live with that". I didn't say "I'm euphoric about it, that's wonderful". I was just damned glad to have the victory in our hands with the minimum loss of casualties and I was willing to settle for that because that's a hell of a lot more than anybody's had in war in as long as I can remember. OK? So that's where it stood and it's something that we should all be damned proud of rather than making a ridiculous issue about whether or not the war went on for eight more hours.

Quite frankly, had the war gone on for eight more hours it would have had absolutely zero impact on the course of history that took place after that event. Zero impact. History would have been exactly the same, the only thing that's different is we probably would have killed a whole lot more Iraqis and we probably would have lost a lot more lives on the part of the United States and its allies.